The purpose of this study was to investigate the history of
delinquency in a birth cohort--in particular, the age of onset of
delinquent behavior and the progression or cessation of delinquency.
Data were collected on a cohort of males born in 1945 and residing in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Information provided in the study includes
demographic characteristics of the individuals studied, academic
performance, offense information, demographic characteristics of
victims of offenses, and criminal incident information. (more info)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the history of
delinquency in a birth cohort--in particular, the age of onset of
delinquent behavior and the progression or cessation of delinquency.
Data were collected on a cohort of males born in 1945 and residing in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Information provided in the study includes
demographic characteristics of the individuals studied, academic
performance, offense information, demographic characteristics of
victims of offenses, and criminal incident information.

Access Notes

The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public.
Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

Study Description

Citation

Wolfgang, Marvin E., Robert Figlio, and Thorsten Sellin. Delinquency in a Birth Cohort in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1945-1963. ICPSR07729-v3. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1994. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07729.v3

Universe:
Boys who were born in 1945 and lived in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, from the ages of 10 to 18.

Data Types:
event/transaction data

Data Collection Notes:

In the individual file (Part 1), the sequence id
numbers range from 1 to 11,172, then skip to 20,000 and range to
20,131. In the offense file (Part 2), the sequence id numbers range
from 1 to 3,534, then skip to 11,111 and range to 11,172. The
individual file therefore has 11,303 total sequence id numbers
representing 11,303 individuals, of which some are offenders and some
are nonoffenders. The sequence id number in the individual file links
to the sequence id number in the offense file, where only offenders are
documented. There are 3,595 total offenders, but since some offenders
have multiple offenses, the total number of offenses is 10,214.

Methodology

Data Source:

records from public, private, and parochial schools in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and records from the Philadelphia Police
Department's Juvenile Aid Division

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:1984-03-18

Version History:

2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 3 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.

2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 3 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.